Science & Tech Quote by Donald Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld’s line is the sound of a national-security lifer watching the monopoly on “secret” vision evaporate in real time. The folksy wind-up (“Oh my goodness gracious”) isn’t just color; it’s a tactic. He performs amazement so he can smuggle a hard point into the room: surveillance has been democratized, and the old hierarchy of who gets to see first is collapsing.

The “trained ape” jab does two things at once. It flatters the audience he’s speaking to (presumably competent professionals) by implying even the stupid can now gather intelligence, and it degrades the new information ecosystem as crude, button-mashing voyeurism. That contempt is the subtext: this isn’t enlightenment, it’s a cheapening of expertise. Yet the sentence admits the uncomfortable truth he’s trying to domesticate: the barrier to entry is gone. “Relatively modest cost” is the dagger. He’s not warning about some sci-fi future; he’s noting a market reality.

Context matters: post-Cold War, especially post-9/11, the U.S. security state leaned heavily on technological superiority and information dominance. Commercial satellite imagery and online data brokers undermined the premise that power comes from exclusive access. Rumsfeld’s intent is managerial and political: justify new secrecy protocols, new spending, and a recalibration of threat models in a world where adversaries, journalists, and citizens can all buy a god’s-eye view.

The wit is blunt, even a little panicked. He’s acknowledging that “open-source intelligence” isn’t a hobby; it’s a structural shift, one that makes control harder, accountability messier, and plausible deniability a lot more expensive.